NASCAR’s Feminine Side

NASCAR’s Feminine Side

 By: Corey Rose

Don’t worry. The following article is not about the empowerment or increased prevalence of women within the racing world. In fact, it’s more of the opposite so if you’re a women’s lib major, you best be finding a new article to read. It’s not that we are trying to demean women here or anything. Danica and the Sprint girls do enough of that for the rest of us. We just want to highlight some of the finer points of the female role in NASCAR from yesterday and today.

Back in the purest of days for NASCAR, being Miss Winston Cup was the equivalent of being chosen as Miss America without the in-depth questions that are inevitably answered with, “world peace”. It was a job for a young lady who didn’t mind a pair of short shorts, high heels, and a little track grime in her perm; the woman who was willing to trade Rodeo Drive for Gasoline Alley. Put on the pearly white smile, land a kiss on the driver’s cheek for a picture, and enjoy the party. What did Miss Winston Cup do with the rest of her race weekend you might ask? She delivered cigarettes to all of the drivers, crew chiefs, and mechanics and she had their brand of choice memorized. That is a fine woman, right there.

If you know what things are like today, you’re probably asking yourself “what the hell happened?” Yeah, so are we and every other NASCAR personality. No more cigs, no more kisses, and no more fun. When you watch a race these days, Miss Sprint Cup is making a b-line for the exit as soon as the beverage du jour starts flying in victory lane. Miss Winston Cup was there to lap the Budweiser out of Dale Sr.’s mustache. Miss Sprint Cup, Monica Palumbo, calls the term trophy girl absolutely offensive.  Former Miss Winston Cup Patti Petty may have coined the term trophy wife when she married Kyle Petty after meeting him for the first time in Victory Lane. She laid a big fat one on Kyle after a hard fought win not because she wore Greek letters and was eight beers deep, but because it was her honor and duty. That’s ‘Merican. On the flip side, Miss Sprint Cup filed a complaint with NASCAR when Tony Stewart kissed her ON THE CHEEK after winning the Brickyard 400 in 2007. 

While Danica and Miss Sprint Cup continue to bring the sport and women everywhere down, there is one group of females that bring it week in and week out: the wives. From Kyle Busch’s Lyla Garrity lookalike to Juan Pablo Montoya’s south of the border sizzler to DeLana Harvick’s infamous firesuit, these women are hotter than a set of Goodyear’s on a Bristol Saturday night. Not only do they know how to look good on the starting grid, these women know racing. They don’t just hang out in the right southern bars waiting for a big name to walk in. They’ve got cred. DeLana Harvick spent her childhood at the track with her dad, Paul Linville, who raced in what is now the Nationwide series until 1995. Needless to say, she wasn’t wearing a jumper and hocking cookies.

The sad thing is that while these women could give the top crew chief in the game a run for his money, Danica Patrick shows us every time she shows up to a NASCAR event that she doesn’t belong.  She’s whiney, she doesn’t know stock car racing from an allen wrench, and she enunciates. She just doesn’t fit. Period.  Thanks to GoDaddy.com and the ad agency that managed to make antifreeze sexual, she gets more face time than most Chase contenders. At the same time, the driver’s wives are out on fundraising tours for organizations like Victory Junction and Speediatrics yet receive very little recognition. Lucky for us and thanks to her lack of success, it doesn’t look like Danica will be making any giant steps for womankind in racing.